Celebrate Earth Hour After General Conference!

March 16th, 2012 by Sprout

Earth Hour is coming soon: next Saturday, March 31 at 8:30-9:30 p.m. at your local time. For those of you who have never heard of Earth Hour, it’s a global event where participating businesses and households turn off all non-essential lights and electricity for a full hour.

I’ve celebrated it for the last four years and it’s a really remarkable experience to go without any kind of electricity for an hour. It fills you with gratitude for electricity, but it also makes you realize that things are kind of nice without it. It’s good to be “unplugged” for a while.

Here’s a couple of before-and-during Earth Hour images that have been taken at famous participating landmarks around the world:

The Eiffel Tower:

The Egyptian Pyramids:

The Golden Gate Bridge:

This year Earth Hour will be the same night as the Saturday sessions of General Conference. If you’re anywhere in the U.S. (besides the East Coast), you’ll be able to celebrate Earth Hour soon after the Priesthood session ends on Saturday. Perhaps while you sit in the dark with your friends and family you could talk about what you’ve learned during Conference so far.

The LDS church has participated in Earth Hour in the past by darkening the lights of the Salt Lake Temple. See this Deseret News article about their past efforts. They have made no announcement about whether they will participate this year. I imagine that it is somewhat unlikely that they will participate since Earth Hour occurs so soon after General Conference this year. That being said, dedicated Mormons everywhere can still celebrate Earth Hour together!

In preparation for Earth Hour, the Earth Hour Youtube Channel has issued their “I Will If You Will” Challenge. Various people have issued a promise to do XYZ if a certain number of people pledge to help the earth in the specific way they’ve indicated.

So, for example, these firefighters have promised to climb this building if 5,000 people agree to take public transportation before Earth Hour:

Come pledge to help the earth or upload your own challenge!

Feel free to tell us how you will be celebrating Earth Hour in the comments.

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Get Involved!

Show your support for our organization by becoming an official member of LDS Earth Stewardship today (no fees required)! Also feel free to join our Facebook group and/or our Google Group to meet other Mormons who care about the earth and to get more information about upcoming events.